Do it, its fun. I love my group rides as much as I like my solo rides. If you have a distance goal like this one, you dont have to do it all in one day like some people say/expect you to do. Do it how you want, may sure YOU enjoy it.

how do you think bikes with say 35's go for the fire trails?ive ridden from canberra to braidwood on a much the same route that you all went on, but ive no idea if the surface gets worse from there.and great little read, makes me want to follow it for some winter coast times

benj wrote:how do you think bikes with say 35's go for the fire trails?ive ridden from canberra to braidwood on a much the same route that you all went on, but ive no idea if the surface gets worse from there.and great little read, makes me want to follow it for some winter coast times

What, like a CX bike?

No problems although I did take cold comfort in the fact that I was on a dually for the corrogations. The other group I mentioned were all on touring bikes like Salsa Fargos and the like.

The road we took were all just dirt roads, no actual fire trails so the surface was pretty good, easily passable by cars so a bike with 35mm tyres should go OK.

At the slower speed because of the weight I find that I don't really worry about the condition of the road on that bike but because we had a sag wagon on that trip and our average speeds were much higher the Anthem was perfect for the trip. In that photo, we were in the Pilot Wilderness in the KNP, that was all fire trail, good fire trail but fire train none the less. It did the job no worries.

Having said that, there was a lot of smooth road and tar where my CX bike would have been just fine too. The only thing I could say is just run knobbies on your CX, they will give you the grip you need. They don't need to be aggressive, smooth in the middle with knobs on the edge like a Maxis Wormdrive would be the perfect compromise.